The latency (time to respond) from your chosen DNS server, determines how quickly your web browser will find the IP address to load a website. You can choose other DNS servers apart from the default one you may get from your ISP.

But how do you know which DNS server will offer the best speed? The answer is simple: you need to check and compare the speeds of various DNS servers to find out which one works best for you.

To do this, you need to run a latency test, which measures how quickly your device is able to communicate with the DNS server, because the result I’m getting will not be the same for everyone.

This can be done by using various tools such as “dig” and “nslookup,” which allow you to check the speed of the DNS server by pinging it and then comparing its response time.

See https://trendoceans.com/check-dns-speed-on-linux-and-windows/

#technology #DNS #networking

Google Drive is a popular cloud storage application that allows you to store data and access it from a Google account securely.

Unfortunately, despite its popularity, Google Drive has yet to have an official client for Linux. If you are a Linux user, there is a good chance you are looking for a Google Drive client or alternative.

Some of these clients are both cross-platform (not just Linux) and cross-cloud (not just Google Drive). Some also optionally provide fully encrypted file transfer, which means your documents are not readable from the Google side (but that also means you can't just log into Google Drive and work with those files - so you decide).

See https://www.tecmint.com/google-drive-clients-linux/

#technology #Linux #GDrive

To generate the commands, it uses OpenAI's GPT-3 or Free Genie, a free to use backend provided by the Shell Genie developer.

Once Shell Genie shows a command, it will ask if you want to run it. Make sure you understand the command before doing that! You could use something like Explain Shell to understand what the command does. Also, it's probably best you only use this for queries / commands that can't break things on your computer. Not all commands will work as expected, so use this at your own risk!

See https://www.linuxuprising.com/2023/02/convert-plain-english-to-commands-using.html

#technology #Linux #ShellGenie #opensource #AI

I did a post about a week back on a nap timer for Android, and 'tom s' on Friendica suggested I have a look at MacroDroid. Even though I had found a solution for the nap timer, I was pretty impressed with MacroDroid and have been delving a lot further into it.

Tasker is the absolute kitchen sink of automation utilities. Very powerful, but also a bit complex. MacroDroid is really offering most of the same but ina way more friendly and intuitive interface. Everything is clearly separated by colour into zones for triggers, actions, and constraints. You can get going with the fairly simple stuff, very quickly. But you can still build some pretty good macros from there.

But there's more... they have masses of 3rd party plugins that you can select to further expand functionality, which extends to even directly using Tasker plugins. Then they also have a quick way of listing community templates for macros that you can just export into your app and customise them for your own use.

Some typical macros I'm already using:

1. When screen turns on during the day, and the outside light is over 6k lux, then push screen brightness quickly to 80%.
2. On any failed login attempt, take a photo with the selfie camera, and save it to phone's gallery.
3. When leaving the house, activate the hotspot mode on the phone. When returning, deactivate hotspot mode and reactivate the WiFi.
4. Nap timer activates DND mode for a user inputted number of minutes, and then sounds a notification to wake up, and deactivates DND mode.

The app is free to use for up to 5 macros, or has a once-off cost of around $5 to unlock premium with no ads and unlimited macros.

The video at the link below gives a quick and high level overview of how it works.

Watch https://youtu.be/8YL9cWCykKc

#technology #android #macrodroid #tasker #automation

The reasons are interesting as it is not just 3rd party bloatware eg. Facebook or Spotify paying to have theirs stuff added by default, but also the fact that Samsung 'duplicates' many standard Android apps.

To be fair to Samsung, some of their duplicate apps do actually contain some useful functions that Google never included. On the downside the quality of Samsung's code may not be the best or leanest.

But it gets worse... as the pixel 7's leaner size actually includes the A/B partitions, and Samsung apparently does not even do the B partition (which means much longer update reboot cycles).

The net effect though of all this space used, is why the lower end Samsung devices also lack a lot of features (space constraints), and why a 128GB model is not going to give you 128GB of actual storage. Your 128GB model that you buy will probably only have 68GB of actual usable user storage...

See https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-samsung-galaxy-s23s-bloated-android-build-somehow-uses-60gb-of-storage/

#technology #Samsung #bloatware

You'd think there were plenty of such apps to quickly:

• set a timer for a 20 or 30-minute nap
• at the same time activate Do Not Disturb mode
• and have an alarm to wake you when the time expires
• then disable DND mode.

Well, many don't mention activating Do Not Disturb (and some I tested certainly did not activate it), and whilst the built-in DND mode does have a timer option, it has no alarm to wake you. Nap Time Alarm by Hil Liao is an open source app that does the job, but it is a bit clunky, and the dismiss alarm does not pop up into the foreground to quickly turn it off.

I tried the Samsung Routines app, but it is finicky in that you can't add DND a second time to disable it (and the reverse option did not reverse DND). I did actually manage to manually set up a task in Tasker that actually does the job exactly as I wanted it.

So I found 'Power Nap one touch - Simple h' by Trecin. Although it was last updated in May 2019 it seems to work perfectly for me on Android 13. On startup, it has a bunch of standard nap times where you press the button, and it just starts the timer (with DND activated, or you can toggle DND to stay off), and pops up the alarm at the end of the period. You can also set the alarm volume to gradually increase (over a period of time) as well as a snooze option.

See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trecin.powernap

#technology #Android #nap #naptimer #powernap

In 2004, a year after Tesla was incorporated, a group of South African engineers joined forces to develop an electric vehicle (EV) in response to growing concerns about global warming.

Kobus Meiring, Mike Lomberg, Jian Swiegers, and Gerhard Swart co-founded Optimal Energy in 2005 to build the country’s first electric vehicle. In December 2005, they received R15 million from the Department of Science and Technology’s Innovation Fund to build a prototype.

The team used existing technologies and off-the-shelf components for the body, chassis, and interior. Most of the development went into battery, electric drive, and vehicle control systems, which were new technologies at the time.

In October 2008, Optimal Energy unveiled its first electric car, the Joule, to the general public at the Paris Motor Show. South African-born Jaguar car designer Keith Helfet designed The Joule and showed the same flowing lines as his other trademark vehicles. After some interior and exterior changes, Optimal Energy showcased the new Joule at the 2010 International Motor Show in Geneva.

This version of the Joule, which was hand-built near Port Elizabeth by Hi-Tech Automotive, was punted as being close to the planned production version.

At the time, Optimal Energy said full-scale production of Joule would begin at the end of 2012, with cars in showrooms by mid-2013.

It's an extremely sad story. No lack of initiative and innovation here, but really there is also a similar economic reason why Musk did not float any Tesla's in South Africa, and why many of South Africa's inventions find traction outside of the country. We also had an inventor in Somerset West, outside of Cape Town, who could not sell his smokeless pollution-free rubber tyre incinerator in South Africa, and I think the same gentleman also invented a very good desalination plant.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/motoring/478991-what-killed-south-africas-tesla.html

#technology #EV #SouthAfrica #Joule #innovation

In a perfect world, all videos would have transcripts, and live videos would have captioning. It's not just a requirement for people without hearing to be able to participate in pop culture and video chats, it's a luxury for people with hearing who just prefer to read what's been said. Not all software has captioning built-in though, and some that does relies on third-party cloud services to function. Live Captions is an application for the Linux desktop that provides instant, local, and open source captioning for video.

See https://opensource.com/article/23/2/live-captions-linux

#technology #opensource #Linux #captions #LiveCaptions

What if you could run Ubuntu but also had access to a community software repository similar to the AUR? Pacstall attempts to become the "AUR" Ubuntu wishes it had. It takes the AUR and puts a spin on it, making it easier to install programs without scouring Github or Gitlab repos and the like.

No it's not quite AUR, but it is still new, so let's see if this takes off for Ubuntu. And yes, whether it will be abused.

DistroTube has done a good video showing how it works on Ubuntu.

Watch https://youtu.be/MFbO60gBRLg

#technology #opensource #Linux #Pacstall